


High Tide

by Soujin



Series: Gaheris is in Love with a Selkie and it's Terrible [1]
Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: F/M, Magic, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Psychosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:50:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soujin/pseuds/Soujin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaheris meets an old lover after killing his mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	High Tide

God, it’s cold. He wakes up cold.

At first he thinks he’s back in the castle, on his straw mattress in his old room, with Agravain and Gareth sleeping near him, Agravain whining and grunting in his sleep like a dog, Gareth with one arm thrown over his stomach, because Gareth would go after the closest person to stay warm. His heart sinks a little because it never made him happy; but then he realises that he isn’t really here.

He’s sleeping in a pile of brush. Sleeping? He turns over and sits up, rubbing at his eyes, and when he does that he feels a cold wet smear.

God. No.

That’s a lie. Lie? It can’t be true; so it’s a lie.

Maybe he’s in the castle. From his window he could look out across the long heather meadow, down the steep sloping cliff that fell into the sea. He could stand there shivering in his woollen trousers watching the silver shapes on the dark sand.

But that wouldn’t explain the blood.

He gets up (trousers aren’t woollen. Leather, maybe. Or linen. Either way it’s dirty) and looks around for the meadow. At least if he finds that he can follow it. His arms and chest feel stiff and tight, but he realises that it’s from the blood, the blood is drying, and his clothes are stiffening in it. God, he thinks, what could have that much blood? Maybe a boar.

Suddenly he realises that he can’t remember whether there are boars in Orkney.

He’s best off finding the sea.

The sea used to be the only thing that could cure the cold, anyway. That cold, he remembers. It would get into his body, under the skin and inside the bones, and the only thing that could get it out was to go down to the sea and watch the silver. They would come to find him there. If anyone looks for him now they’ll know.

As it turns out, he remembers where the cliff is. He even remembers where the golden curve of the path is, follows it down through the stones until he comes out on the shore.

Something in his heart twitches. (Maybe he shouldn’t be here.) (Maybe, but he has to get the cold out somehow, and he has to wash away some of the blood before it drowns him, and they’ll know where to find him here, they always knew how.)

He kneels down in the surf where it meets the sand, white with a froth like Orkney beer. The blood comes off easily, leaving a red stain in the sand, and he’s so pleased with way it washes out that he takes off his tunic and scrubs it with a rough rock, takes off his trousers, ducks his head under the bitter, salty water and shakes away the blood that’s dried in his hair. It’s all coming off, it’s coming away, it’s leaving him.

The cold, though, the cold is still there.

He waits. He remembers the waiting, although they’re not bound by moonlight, have none of the fay rules of light and dark. They’ll come when they want to, and when they want to they’ll be here.

He falls asleep.

“Man.”

Oh, God, his heart is as tired as his body. He lifts his head anyway, and she looks down at him, her eyes like flat black stones.

“You’re back.”

“It’s cold out there,” he says, steadily. “Damned cold. I missed you.”

She sits down beside him, her long body the brown and grey colour of sand. Her hair is black like her eyes. “Why didn’t you take my skin?”

“Don’t have any use for a damned sealskin,” he tells her. “You wear it better.”

She almost smiles. Almost. “Did you come back for me?”

He nods.

“Why do you smell like blood?”

“I don’t know. Suppose I killed something.”

She rests her hand on his knee, holding her fingers strangely, as if there were too many. He’s naked, but the cold is ebbing out now, out with the tide.

“There are other Men coming from the big island. Boats and Men. They smell like your kin.”

“That’s all right. They know to find me here.”

The selkie leans forward, her black hair brushing his cheek. “Man, the blood smells like your kin. Don’t stay here.”

“What?”

“We don’t want your Man blood in our water. You didn’t take my skin. Go back up and hide from your kin, but don’t come back here.”

He finds the way back to the heather meadow, but he doesn’t remember how. He doesn’t even think of his clothes until he’s back from the cliffs, deep into the meadow. Nothing means anything. (Maybe it never will again.)

He doesn’t remember, either, whether he sleeps. All he can think of is the blood, and the black-eyed selkie with her hand on his knee. He kissed her once. Not now, but a long time ago, back when he was a child still and shared his room with Gareth and Agravain. She was down on the sand with her skin folded behind a rock, and he found it and let it be. She was so beautiful, basking in what sun there was. He sat still and watched her, and when she came to him he apologised, and she took him into the water.

(Don’t come back here.)

“Gaheris!”

When he hears them calling his name, the cold sinks back into his body, and this time he knows it won’t wash away in the sea.

“Gaheris! God, where is he?”

He burrows further into the thick heather and pretends to be deaf and blind and senseless, God, anything, because his kin have come and it might have been their blood, and he can’t put a name to anything any more but he knows he’ll dream about it anyway. Everything is silver. The world is full of blood and silver and the scent of heather, too sweet to be true. Oh, God, he’s so cold.

“There he is! Oh, Christ, Gaheris.”


End file.
